


Mother’s cages were never so large

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Swan-Mills Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1484377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma’s hand is still on her wrist and she thinks about Zelena and Emma, two curly-haired little girls who’d been cheated out of family before their fates had ever been decided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother’s cages were never so large

She climbs down the stairs gingerly, her red gloves still on like a shield from the dust and grime that’s accumulated here. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in days, even the dwarves and fairies on rotation to bring food and water to their captive, and Regina doesn’t know what to expect when she steps down into the cellar.

 

She sees the auburn hair first, precisely her mother’s shade, and something within her clenches at the sight of it. Maybe Emma hadn’t been wrong– _No, no, you can’t do this Regina, I can’t let you do this,_ she’d shouted and thrown Zelena to the ground before Regina could deliver the killing blow.

 

She’d thought about Henry, watching wide-eyed from the sidelines, and pulled back, but Emma had said _She’s your family, don’t you understand? Lock the bitch up but you can’t do this, she’s all you have left_. The mother had hastened Regina’s mother’s execution and the daughter fights just as passionately for her sister and she doesn’t understand until she sees Zelena sitting rigid in her cell like a deposed evil queen who has their mother’s eyes and hair.

 

She looks up only briefly to sneer at Regina. “You. You couldn’t even manage to kill me, could you?”

 

Regina’s fingers itch, the insecurities of the past few months returning with a vengeance, and she has to breathe and remind herself that she’s _won_ , that even with Emma stripped of her power and the Dark One under Zelena’s control, Regina had been able to defeat Zelena for good. Her sister might be good at getting under her skin, but she’s wrong. “I could have,” she allows. “I chose not to.”

 

She leaves then, unwilling to stay in the dank cellar for any more time when she has her son back and the town is quiet.

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t stay for long,” Emma says when she gets home. They’re living together now. It’s about Henry and the sheer amount of space that a baby seems to take up at the Charmings, but it’s not entirely unpleasant to have Emma Swan wandering around her house in godawful flannel pajamas when she opens the door.

 

“I have to be at work in a half hour.”

 

She works whenever she wants to now, and Emma knows it, but she just pours out some sugary cereal that Regina didn’t buy and says, “You can do it at your own pace, you know. She’s kind of…”

 

“Insane?”

 

“Yeah.” But hopeful blue-green eyes are looking up at her and Emma murmurs, “But if you want to know her, she’s not going anywhere.”

 

“Why is it so important to you that I get to know her at all?” Regina asks, pouring herself some of the cereal. It tastes like brown sugar and sticks to her teeth and is as cloyingly sweet as Snow White. She finishes a bowl anyway.

 

Emma shrugs. “It’s not. I don’t care about her. I just think…you should have more than Henry.”

 

* * *

 

Later that night, after an exhausting day for each of them and Henry’s in the family room doing homework, Emma knocks back half a cup of cider and admits, “I was found on the side of the road, too.”

 

“I know.”

 

“And I guess…I kind of get the resentment. Of being replaced.” She knows that Emma had lived with one family until they’d had their own baby and she’d been sent back into the system. She also knows that Emma had been the one to suggest moving out of Snow’s house once the baby had been born, but had spent half the night after at the Rabbit Hole until Ruby had found her and summoned Regina to pick her up.

 

“So you think Zelena was _justified_?” Her voice is rising and the old insecurities are back, the _oh Regina what have you done now_ that had made her trust a stranger with her heart instead of the people who’d become her family. “You’re on her side?”

 

“No!” Emma puts a hand on her wrist. It’s warm and she finds her head clearing up instantly with the touch. “Jeez, Regina, of course I’m not. She’s a psychopath. I wound up as a thief because of my shitty past, not a _murderer_.”

 

They sit in silence for a moment, Regina brimming with indignant thoughts and sympathy and that nagging guilt that’s slowly scraping at her heart every time she thinks too hard about what Emma had gone through because of her, and Emma finally adds slowly, “I don’t know what I might have become in another realm. If I’d always had magic.”

 

“Hn.” Emma’s hand is still on her wrist and she thinks about Zelena and Emma, two curly-haired little girls who’d been cheated out of family before their fates had ever been decided.

 

* * *

 

She watches Zelena silently again. The room is illuminated only by a dim lamp and she’s brought a stronger one and her copy of _Lord of the Flies_. She’d thought about something milder, but Zelena seems less a romantic and more a fan of…well, murder.

 

“What’s this?” she says, eyeing the book with suspicion.

 

“It’s a book. You turn the pages and read the words. Please tell me you had books in Oz.”

 

Zelena stares at her like _she’s_ the idiot. “Yes, we had books in Oz, you fool. Why are you giving it to me?”

 

She looks away, fumbling with her gloves and thinking about how Emma’s eyes had turned gentle when she’d mentioned where she was going. “I thought you might be bored.”

 

“Ah.” Zelena doesn’t thank her, but she flips to the first page and begins reading silently. Regina can see her lips moving with the words, sounding them out as though she truly isn’t accustomed to reading. Glinda had told them that Zelena had been a woodcutter’s daughter. Perhaps there hadn’t been as much time for leisure reading where she’d grown up in poverty.

 

She wonders how Emma had looked at the wealthy when she’d been a child, if all she’d seen had been expensive clothing and not the shadows behind their eyes. “You’re faring well here,” she says, and Zelena’s brow wrinkles with disbelief.

 

“In this cage? I’m a prisoner. My only company is a rotation of irritating dwarf guards and _you_.” She spits out the word with so much loathing that Regina wonders if this whole situation isn’t an exercise in futility, where they have nothing more to say to each other and Emma’s hoping for too much.

 

Still, no one’s ever hoped for _too much_ for her, and that has to mean something. And maybe this angry woman in a cell means something, too. She clears her throat and stands, gazing down at her sister who has all the delicate features of royalty that their mother had so favored on others. “Mother’s cages were never so large.”

 

* * *

 

“What’s she like?” Henry wants to know after dinner when they’re sitting on the couch together. She hasn’t told him that she’d gone down to see Zelena but one of the dwarves had mentioned it to Snow and nothing private lasts very long around _her_. There’d been a time when she’d have been furious at the breach of privacy but she thinks she’s finally come to terms with Snow’s unchangeable nature, just as Snow has done the same for her.

 

“Angry,” she says honestly. “Obnoxious. There isn’t much more to do when your enemies have defeated you for good. All you have is your pride and anger and thoughts of vengeance.”

 

And Henry understands, more than most children his age would. He’s spent too long exposed to good and evil both and had struggled to come to terms with them, and after a year with her removed from his life he’s been asking for more of her story than ever before.

 

It isn’t easy. She cries sometimes, nakedly and unashamedly in front of her thirteen-year-old son, and she finds more and more remorse with every word that has Henry flinching from her ad biting back his judgments. She’s never allowed herself to dwell very much on her misdeeds before, and now that she’s…different…she’s struck by pain for her victims nearly as often as pain for herself.

 

She no longer has the luxury of hating them, not now that love is the only thing that powers her heart, and the object of her love says quietly, “But you got me,” and her face cracks into a timid smile.

 

“I did,” she agrees. “And you made all the difference.”

 

She glances across the room to where Emma sits with her paperwork and pretends not to listen to them every night. It’s more comfortable with that barrier between them, even if they’re both content with the other’s presence in the room.

 

Emma looks up and smiles, and Regina knows that they aren’t very different at all.

 

* * *

 

“Cora used to lock you up?” Zelena asks when she next descends into the cellar. “You must have deserved it.” But there’s not much bite to the comment and the witch is looking at her with undisguised curiosity as she takes a seat.

 

“Mother,” Regina begins, sitting on a stool and crossing her ankles. “Believed that I was too headstrong. Too careless with my future. She had ambitions and was determined that I live them out for her. And when I…disagreed, she’d tie me up with magic, lock me up or immobilize me until I swore I’d be good again.” She doesn’t like to think about it, had skimmed over those elements of her childhood when talking to Henry, but Zelena- still dark and envious and angry- needs to hear it more than anyone.

 

She sees Zelena’s face behind the bars, hungry and smug in a way that Regina imagines says, **_I_** _would have been good. I would have been enough_ , and she looks away, recalling her mother’s _you would have been enough_ before she’d died. Rumple has said that Cora had given up her heart when Regina had been a baby, which means that she’d abandoned Zelena when she’d still had her heart.

 

That knowledge has corrupted that last promise of her mother’s, and she wants to be angry with Zelena for it but instead she’s just left with emptiness. _You can’t blame someone for being born_ , Emma had said after her parents had welcomed their new child and she’d looked over at Regina’s strained smile with knowing eyes. There’s no more space for displaced culpability in this room.

 

* * *

 

Zelena finishes _The Lord of the Flies_ and then Emma insists that Regina give her the Harry Potter books next. “If she’s not a reader to begin with, maybe we should get her an iPad,” she says. They’re in Storybrooke’s only bookstore, leafing through the paltry selection it has to offer. “Install some Wi-Fi in the cellar and let her learn about this world through there instead of murderous kids on a deserted island.”

 

So they buy her an iPad and Emma skips work one day to supervise the installation of the Wi-Fi in the cellar. One of the dwarves complains, but the others are apparently just glad to have some service down there when they’re coming and going  on guard duty.

 

Emma doesn’t say anything about her time in the cellar with Zelena, but the next afternoon Zelena says, “I’m not sorry about manipulating Emma Swan’s lover like I did.”

 

Regina isn’t sorry about it, either- Hook had irritated her more and more over the past few months with his damn puppydog eyes and his endless pursuit of Emma, and his ultimate betrayal and departure from Storybrooke had been a relief even if it had hurt Emma so badly. But she understands the vehemence of the statement, the surety that they _can’t_ be sorry, no matter how much Emma might break through their defenses.

 

“She’s living with Henry and me now,” Regina says. It’s casual, like filling in a sister who actually cared about her on her life, and she continues swiftly. “If Hook were still around, she’d have probably moved aboard the Jolly Roger. You’ve done her a favor, believe me.”

 

They both snicker, a nasty kind of camaraderie that makes Regina imagine shared bedrooms and late nights gossiping in the dark, and she’s still smiling when she makes her way aboveground again.

 

* * *

 

Tonight she talks to Henry about her later days of queenship, after she’d taken on the title of evil queen and thrown herself into the attempted murder of Snow White with all her power. It’s a difficult talk, the first that has Henry looking at her through eyes that don’t comprehend at all, and she prattles on and on about magic and corruption when they both know that they’re all meaningless excuses.

 

Emma watches with such sympathy that she can’t bear to look at her after Henry carefully kisses them both on the cheek and runs upstairs to bed, not until she hears the low, “He knows you’ve changed.”

 

“Does he?” She looks helplessly toward the stairs. “Can you ever really change from that?”

 

“I don’t know.” And when she looks up, Emma is standing up, pushing aside her little coffee table where she catches up on work and walking over to the couch so she can sit beside Regina. “Honestly, I don’t know if I really believe in second chances anymore.” She sighs, and with it comes a wave of loss that envelops Regina and she is _not_ sorry that Hook left, even if it’s hardened Emma even more.

 

She rises again, obviously uncomfortable, and Regina reaches down to clench the cushions of the couch in her hands so she won’t use magic or break anything. It doesn’t matter what Emma Swan thinks about her past, they both live in the present and there’s no need to be wrapped up in shame for once being evil.

 

But Emma pauses at the door, and she doesn’t look back when she says, “I do believe in you, Regina,” and vanishes up the staircase to her room.

 

When she next visits Zelena, Emma’s there, too.

 

* * *

 

“So he was a person before he was a monkey, right?” Emma’s asking. She’s cross-legged on the ground and looking up at Zelena, and Regina hesitates at the top of the stairs, unsure what she’s walked in on. “Like…it’s not _completely_ ridiculous to have been attracted to him, right?”

 

Zelena tilts her head. “I like him better as a monkey,” she says, and Regina’s eyebrows shoot right up as Emma smothers a laugh.

 

The witch continues, apparently unaware of what she’s just implied. “And how is your new brother?”

 

Emma squints at her suspiciously. “You’ve been awfully interested in my brother for a while now, haven’t you?”

 

Zelena waves a hand. “He’s irrelevant now that I’m trapped in here and Regina has her heart back.” Her ‘heart,’ in the end, hadn’t been a physical item but her son, who hadn’t even remembered her at the time and hadn’t known why the woman holding him was using him against Storybrooke’s mayor. “I have some fleeting interest in sibling affairs, though.”

 

“I’m sure.”

 

“Do you hate him?” There’s that hunger in Zelena’s eyes that Regina’s seen whenever she mentions Cora, that desire to know someone she can’t touch. “For being what you couldn’t?”

 

“What? Of course not!” Emma says, shaking her head vigorously. “He’s a _baby_.”

 

“Hm.” Zelena considers her for another moment, and she lifts her head only briefly to make eye contact with Regina at the top of the stairs. “Do you hate them?”

 

“Them?”

 

“Your parents.”

 

“Why is everything hate with you?” Emma says, exasperated. “How did you get this emotionally stunted?” She shakes her head, glancing up and seeing Regina waiting. “I’m gonna go now. Leave you two alone. You can go twirl your mustaches or whatever you do together.”

 

“Will you come back?” Zelena asks, and there’s something almost plaintive about it. Regina remembers her own time in prison- she isn’t entirely sure that most of her life hasn’t been moving from one prison sentence to the next, actually- and she knows that Emma is thinking of her own when she says, “Yeah, okay,” and brushes past Regina upstairs.

 

“Does she hate them?” Zelena asks again once Emma leaves.

 

Regina nods. “I think she might, just a little.” And she’s rightfully terrified of the idea of it, and if Regina didn’t understand the concept perfectly she’d be just as confused as Zelena looks right now.

 

* * *

 

Emma is curled up on the couch when she gets home from work the next day, watching Game of Thrones and eating the greasy popcorn that she’s not supposed to take out of the kitchen. “Hard day saving kittens from trees?” she asks sardonically.

 

“Mulan switched shifts with me. I saw Elsa hanging out at the station before I left so I’m pretty sure she’s got plans tonight.” Emma frowns. “Wait, so if Frozen just came out last year, then how is Elsa in Storybrooke? Do people just…pop into existence in the Enchanted Forest whenever Disney puts out a new movie?”

 

Regina holds out a hand, palm extended, and waits until Emma passes over the popcorn with a sulky sigh. “No, you idiot. Disney didn’t invent the Snow Queen. It was a fairytale first.” She’s actually fairly certain that quite a bit of Frozen had been fabricated anew and Elsa is part of that, but she doesn’t question _that_. It’s led to too many headaches already.

 

“Oh.” She turns back to the screen. “Come watch.” She doesn’t move, and Regina picks up her feet and takes a seat under them.

 

She doesn’t have much interest in fantasy television- that that involves her or not- but she’s caught this show with Emma enough times that she can follow the plot. She’d thought she’d identify most with the queen, who loves her son and is crippled by others’ disdain for her womanhood but surges forward regardless. But instead, it’s demure prisoner Sansa who captures her attention most.

 

She wonders if Zelena would understand why, or if it’s still as simple as hating her for a life she’d never wanted.

 

“Jaime’s such an idiot,” Emma mumbles through the popcorn that’s already back in her hands.

 

She stares at the brash golden-haired man running around sword-first onscreen and then at the woman sprawled across the couch and says, not without some fondness, “Yes, he is.”

 

* * *

 

“I want to learn magic again,” Emma announces one day, and both Regina and Henry turn to frown at her.

 

“Emma, you don’t have any…”

 

“Zelena says I still do.” Emma pokes at her taco shell as it folds under the pressure of all the meat stuffed inside. “She says it’s like…I’ve been totally drained of it, but since it’s innate, all my power levels can come back up. I just need to draw it out again.”

 

Regina bites back a retort because magic is _hers and Emma’s,_ not _Emma’s and Zelena’s_ , and she might be stronger than both of them in terms of her skill but they’ve got that same unfathomable raw power to work with. It had never come quite so easily to her when she’d been young. “Will you be training with her in the cellar?” she asks instead, stabbing at her melon and avoiding Emma’s eyes.

 

“What? No, magic’s our thing,” Emma says, and relief floods Regina all at once. “I’m not learning anything from someone that volatile. And I’m definitely not taking that cuff off her arm.”

 

“Ah.” A wise decision. “What’s spurred this change of heart?”

 

Emma shrugs. “I don’t want to be helpless the next time Cruella De Vil shows up in Storybrooke and tries to kill Archie. If I’m here for good, then magic is just…something I’m going to have to learn.” There’s more to it, a secret she doesn’t dare discuss at the table, but Regina remembers Emma doubled over with her hand against her mouth and sobbing howls of _it was mine! He took it and it was mine! It was all I’d had to–_ and the sheer violation Emma had felt when wrapped in her arms after Hook’s kiss.

 

She feels her own power creeping up, drawn out by instinct toward Emma’s, and she nods and touches Emma’s arm and forces it back down.

 

* * *

 

“They called me wicked when I was an innocent,” Zelena tells her one day, wrapping her hands around the bars of the cage. “And only once I saw you did I truly become wicked.” She watches Regina with a flat face, only her eyes indicative of the rage that still simmers beneath the surface. “You had everything. You had love, you had royalty, you had Rumplestiltskin’s curse…” She scowls. “I had nothing but my magic.”

 

“I didn’t have what I wanted. You know what Mother did to the only one who loved me.”

 

“A stable boy!” Zelena laughs, and it’s suddenly grating on Regina’s ears. “Mother was only trying to help you. You could have done so much better. You married a _king_ , and you still complain about your silly little stable boy–“

 

She’s moving before she can stop herself, disappearing and reappearing inside the cage to wrap a hand around Zelena’s neck, backing her against the bars behind them. “Don’t you _dare_ talk about Daniel like that,” she hisses. “You know nothing of what I wanted. What I still want.”

 

Zelena watches her, amused, and it’s that condescending smirk that infuriates Regina even more. “I will never love another man like I did Daniel, do you understand? I don’t give a damn about my…my soulmate or any of that tripe.” She’d met _him_ , and he’d been perfectly decent and likable and she hadn’t made it past their first drink together before she’d realized that she had no interest in anything more than friendship there. “I can’t love anyone anymore. Not like him.” Her heart is still black, and only Henry can fit in those healing red parts of it. No _man_.

 

Zelena raises her eyebrows. “But you love Emma Swan,” she points out, and Regina’s hand slides from her neck at once.

 

“I do _not_.”

 

“I’m your sister,” Zelena says. “I understand you.” She considers it thoughtfully. “Emma seems…easy to love. I would feel the same in your position.”

 

“You don’t understand anything.” Because Zelena still believes that Regina had been the lucky one, still loves their mother without reservation, still craves the tutelage and approval Rumple had gifted to her. She doesn’t understand how her isolation and damnation had been just as strong as Zelena’s own. She doesn’t understand that Emma’s relationship with Regina is nothing _close_ to love.

 

“I understand your eyes when you talk about her. And how she talks about you, as though you’re so important to her that she needs your guidance in _everything_.” She scoffs. “She says you used to try to run her out of town daily, but I think now all you’d need to do is ask and she’d jump up and go.” She looks a little wistful. “Have the seasons changed outside? You’re wearing a lighter coat today.”

 

She’s succeeded in deflecting attention from herself with nothing more than the weather, but Regina is relieved to discuss it. “It’s getting warmer. But I don’t think we’re there yet.” She inhales, catching a whiff of musty straw in the room. “And I don’t love Emma Swan.”

 

* * *

 

She kisses Emma in the middle of their first magic lesson and then stands back, stammering, and is horribly embarrassed when Emma stares at her and says, “ _Oh_. Oh, god, Regina, I…um, I didn’t realize you felt that way.” She’s backing away, her hands up, and then she says, “I mean, it’s very flattering and you really are very important to me but I don’t like women and…” She blinks. “Well, I’ve never _thought_ about liking women but you’re probably the hottest woman I’ve ever seen, don’t get me wrong…”

 

She’s chewing on her lip, looking helpless and just as lost as Regina feels right now, and Regina finally takes pity on her and says, “That was nothing. Just a magical trick Zelena had suggested to bring out some of your power.”

 

It’s a lie, but Emma’s so desperate to believe that she doesn’t catch it. “Oh! Then okay, um…should we do it again?”

 

She leans in, lips already puckering up, and Regina says, “No, I think we’re done for today,” and storms down into the cellar as soon as she can.

 

“This is your fault!” she snaps out, and Zelena watches her as she circles the room again and again and again until she’s dizzy and nauseous and Emma’s lips taste like onions and garlic bread and she doesn’t want to _think_ about it. “ _You_ put that idea in my head. _You_ made me believe that she’d reciprocate. I hope you’re happy because you’re ruining my life all over again!”

 

Zelena watches her, her lip curling, and a voice from behind them says, “ _Regina_.”

 

It’s Emma, descending the stairs to the cellar, and she trips a little on the last step and frowns at them both. “She’s not ruining your life anymore.”

 

“She’s trying!” Her voice is too high, bordering on hysterical, and Emma takes her hands in her own until she’s breathing normally again. “Maybe I’d better leave,” she breathes, and Zelena says her name once but she storms away and stops only when she’s out of the cellar.

 

* * *

 

Zelena’s voice still rings out disbelievingly, loud enough for her to hear outside. “ _You’re_ not interested in women?”

 

“I don’t know what I’m into! Look, I was finally getting somewhere with a guy.” Emma’s voice is at the same pitch as Regina’s had been moments before. “And okay, he winds up being a flying monkey. Thanks to _you_. So maybe I have some trust issues. And then _you’re_ responsible for my first love dying, and then _you_ manipulate Hook into some asshole decisions, and I know you were very focused on destroying Regina’s life but you kind of screwed me up all over again in the process.” A pause, then an extra annoyed, “And you could _maybe_ look a little less smug about it?”

 

“Family loyalty,” Zelena says, as though that isn’t a fucking joke in the Mills family. “Perhaps it’s time you gave up on men altogether.”

 

“Oh, shut _up_.”

 

Regina walks away, careful not to look back.

 

* * *

 

That night she tells Henry about her first days in Storybrooke, how she’d traded exile for the monotony of a world where no one changed and she’d been unhappy even in her victory. She talks about another little boy and her temples itch furiously with muscle memory of the agony Owen had put her through when he’d returned to town three decades later.

 

Henry watches her with solemn eyes and she might have paid for Owen’s father’s death with torture, but it suddenly doesn’t feel like enough.

 

Her only relief is that she has only one last atrocity to confess, and it’s the one he’s known about since the night she’d squeezed a heart in her hand and let it fall to the ground as dust.

 

“Tomorrow I’m going to tell you all about how I first adopted you,” she says, smiling. New memories had returned with the breaking of Zelena’s curse, recollections of an obsession with eighteen-year-old Emma that she’d put aside for Henry’s sake. She hadn’t been quite so capable when twenty-eight-year-old Emma had arrived in Storybrooke.

 

Henry beams up at her, glad for a happy story at last, and then he says, “Can you take me to meet Zelena?”

 

“ _What_?”

 

He shrugs. “I’ve never had an aunt. And you and Emma spend so much time there…I want to see what she’s like when she’s not trying to kill us all.”

 

“She’s just as awful as when she is. She’s still determined to…” Her voice trails off, because Emma doesn’t like it when she talks about Zelena ruining her life. Something about victim complexes just encouraging both of them to moan a lot instead of building the perfect little sisterhood that Emma envisions for them.

 

It’s hard to come back from losing a year of your life to your jealous big sister.

 

But, oddly enough, without Zelena, she’d still be trapped in a world without indoor plumbing. Or Henry. Or Emma.

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk when Emma gets home. It’s hours later and Emma’s hands are nearly glowing with blue magic, and she tucks away her resentment in the same little mental box where any memory of Emma’s lips on hers are hidden. “You were practicing with Zelena,” she says finally.

 

“Yeah.” They look at each other and Emma’s eyes _definitely_ dip to her chest but they don’t say anything for a while, staring blankly at each other again.

 

“Is she a good teacher?”

 

“She didn’t magic me onto a bridge and start removing the slats, so I guess she’s only subpar.” Emma tries for a smile that Regina doesn’t quite return. “Here’s the thing. I don’t want-“

 

Regina cuts her off before she can say anything more. “Can we just…forget today? Pretend it never happened.”

 

“Oh.” Emma bobs her head. “Right. Okay. Sure.” She takes a step forward, smile firmly affixed onto her face.

 

Regina’s backed against the wall of the foyer an instant later, being kissed breathless by Emma Swan, and she’s so dazed that she doesn’t even remember to kiss her back until Emma’s already pressing her lips in a line down the side of her face, her arms sliding up her back until they’re firm against her shoulder blades. She dislodges Emma’s lips from her neck to kiss her properly, long and deep with emotions that had been pent up for longer than she’d like to think about.

 

“Or we could _not_ forget it,” Emma offers, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, and then she laughs helplessly and says, “You’d better not leave me alone, Regina Mills.”

 

She’s never meant it so fervently when she’s said _I’m not going anywhere_ , swirling her tongue across Emma’s neck with possessive emphasis.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think Cora would have liked me?”

 

It’s the question Regina knows that Zelena would have asked months ago, if she’d been less proud. She’s thought about it often, every time she sees auburn hair and a long neck. _Would she have been enough for Mother?_

 

And the second, nagging thought, of a stable boy and a quiet future that might have been assured had her sister married the king instead. She thinks less of it now that her mind is filled with chapped lips and blue-green eyes and magic compatible enough to power every height they climb to together, but it’s always there, waiting in the back of her mind.

 

It takes her a moment to focus on Zelena and say, “Yes. No.” Because Zelena is regal and disdainful and wears even the jeans Emma had brought over for her once with grace. But Zelena is also bullheaded and foolish and has patience only half of the time, and it had taken Regina only months to defeat her and break her curse. Emma had needed the bulk of a year.

 

Emma could never have been her stable girl. She’s too impetuous, too stubborn, and her mother would have sent her away the moment she’d first mouthed off to her.

 

Emma would never have fit in in the Enchanted Forest at all, and she doesn’t know if she’d be quite so enamored with whatever version would have grown up in Snow White’s castle, spoiled and beloved and the picture-perfect princess.

 

“But I’m stronger than you.” Zelena stares down at the band that suppresses her magic with distaste. “I was always stronger than you.”

 

“No,” she says, and thinks of her wonderful, sweet boy and his hardly sweet mother and _love is weakness_ and she knows that she’s never been weak because of them.

 

* * *

 

Emma is curled against her on the couch and Henry’s got the popcorn tonight (no butter, and anyone who drops kernels between the cushions is vacuuming the couch, _Emma_ ) and Regina tells them her story, eyes half-shut as she remembers it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified.”

 

“Not even in Neverland?” Henry asks sleepily.

 

Regina rolls her eyes. “I think by the time Neverland rolled around I was used to you putting yourself in death-defying situations. It’s the Charming in you.”

 

Emma snorts. “Oh, please.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Have you ever known me to run around risking my life? Nope, that would be the mom who absorbs death curses and tries to die saving the town and handed over her heart to a _thief_ a few months ago. Don’t blame my genes on it when it’s your death wish.” She presses a kiss to the side of Regina’s neck to soften her words, and Regina sighs happily.

 

“Yes, well. I was terrified. I thought you’d run away forever, that all that friction between us had meant that you’d made out of Storybrooke and were lying in a ditch somewhere. I spent half the night in tears and the other half plotting revenge against every single member of the town who’d ever crossed paths with you.”

 

She closes her eyes. “And then just after eight, I turned and looked out the window and saw you. Both of you,” she says, curling fingers around one wrist to her right and one to her left.

 

“We found you,” Emma says, flinging a hand to her eyes dramatically. “We will always–“

 

“Shut _up_ , Miss Swan.”

 

* * *

 

Zelena is quieter these days, the hostility all but gone and replaced by a woman who’s tired of fighting. Regina knows the feeling, though she’d found another focus in her son and in these Charming-style heroics she’s somehow been inducted into. Zelena has found it in the Internet and movies and now she and Emma are playing the Sims together whenever they’re down in the cellar.

 

“I don’t want you killing my mom by _electrocuting_ her!”

 

“What about starvation? That gives her time to suffer.”

 

“Did you _Google_ ways to kill off your characters?”

 

“No.” Zelena glances over to Regina and she innocently flips open the closest Harry Potter book. “Regina did it for me.”

 

Emma throws up her hands. “ _Why_ did I take up with a family of sociopaths?”

 

“Snow White _is_ exceptionally stupid,” Zelena says thoughtfully. “I think she might really forget to eat for a few days.”

 

Regina’s grinning behind her hand and she nods, at once serious. “It’s always been a concern of mine.”

 

They share a newfound amity at that, a happy realization that they’ve found a delightful disdain in common, and Emma slumps back against the cell and says, “I give up.”

 

More beautiful words have never been spoken.

 

* * *

 

Summer comes to Storybrooke, and with it comes Henry growing nearly to Regina’s chin. They feed him ice cream and baby him and refuse to admit that he’s growing up, and Regina’s never been so grateful that Emma’s false memories offer her the same despondency as Regina at Henry’s growth spurt.

 

“I want him to just stay tiny and obnoxious forever,” Emma sighs, stealing a swipe of mint ice cream from Regina’s cone as Henry runs through the grass with Roland Hood on his shoulders. Jefferson’s daughter is giggling on the side with Ava Zimmer and Goldilocks and Henry keeps glancing back at Grace and standing a little taller, twirling Roland around until the little boy staggers to the ground and promptly falls on his face from dizziness. “Why is he looking at that girl like that? Who does she think she is?”

 

“Her father hates me. But he once kidnapped Mary Margaret Blanchard, so I suppose that’s a point in his favor,” Regina muses.

 

“Jefferson’s kid.” Emma frowns. “Wait, he also tried to kill me! That’s not a point toward anything!”

 

“Well, he didn’t succeed, did he, dear?” She frowns. “I thought he’d begun portal jumping again. If Grace is here, then he must be, too.”

 

“Why does that matter?”

 

She thinks about Zelena, melancholy when they visit all energized and sunburned, and says, “I don’t know.”

 

* * *

“So you’re my Aunt Zelena.” Henry walks right up to the cage and doesn’t flinch at all, and she’s hit by a wave of pride at how unafraid he is of this woman who’d kidnapped him just a few months ago. Emma squeezes her hand, and she holds it tight to her palm.

 

“And you’re Henry.” She smiles at him, and there’s no anger there anymore, not pointed at him or anyone Regina holds dear. She hasn’t been rehabilitated, not in a prison with no accessible power. She’s not to be trusted in Storybrooke, but Regina thinks that this particular feud might be over.

 

She remembers Emma, insisting that something good could still be born of hers and Zelena’s hatred, that Zelena was all she had left.

 

She’d loathed her not too long ago. They’d loathed each other, actually, had sought to tear each other down and now they’re all sitting together in a cellar talking about Henry’s summer plans and she thinks that maybe this is what sisterhood is supposed to be like. With less murder, perhaps.

 

And Emma Swan who doesn’t believe in second chances anymore has been doing everything in her power to make sure that this works for them. For _her_. She holds her hand tighter as Henry says, “So were you really _green_?” and Zelena scowls and then calms with nothing more than a warning glance from Emma.

 

Regina knows the feeling.

 

“I was. It looked rather attractive with my complexion,” she tells Henry, and that’s all it takes before he’s swinging too-long legs against a chair and asking her a slew of questions about Oz and their connection to the book and does she also have an army of bees and does this mean his mom is going to have a house dropped on her?

 

She leans against Emma and Emma whispers, “How did we become friends with your sister?” and she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

 

* * *

Zelena leaves on a sunny day, the cuff removed and all the fairies in attendance poised with their fairy dust and waiting for her to renege on their agreement. Regina’s half-expecting it, too, by the end, but all that happens is that a flying monkey swoops down from the sky and lands just behind Zelena. It opens and closes one eye in a wink at Emma and Emma shudders and hides Henry behind her.

 

Zelena nods to them. “Do come visit soon. Oz is lovely in autumn.”

 

“Of course,” Regina says, and she’s surprised to note that she looks forward to it with equal parts eagerness and dread at that much time spent with her sister. _Family_. This is how it should be, right?

 

Jefferson spins his hat and the portal opens before them, and Zelena steps through with only a brief glance back. Henry waves and Emma nods and Regina doesn’t know that she’s smiling until after the portal is closed and they’re standing together as a family, shielding their eyes from the sun.


End file.
